Hoover Dam (thing)

Two types of tours are given of the dam: The $8 tour that takes about 40 minutes and leaves every 20 minutes, and the more 'hard hat' tour (I think $20) that is much more involved. I wanted to take the hard hat tour, but my time was short because I wanted to see the Porn Stars at AdultDex, and the hard hat tour didn't leave for another hour and a half when I visited the dam. In retrospect, I should have waited around for the hard hat tour.

When the dam was first built, there were theories bandied about that the enormous concentration of concrete in one spot would throw the earth off its axis. If this happened, some of the smaller countries were planning to sue for reparations in the World Court.

About 20 years ago, the administrator of the dam decided he didn't like the bats that lived there, so he had them exterminated. Needless to say, it is now plagued by insects. Attempts are being made to bring the bats back.

Although Las Vegas is only a 45 minute drive away from the dam (and half the time is spent on slow roads), it only gets about 2% of the dam's power output. This is because, when the dam was built and power was being assigned, the city only had a population of 6,000, and the mayor saw no reason for the population to increase by any significant amount.

The dam was originally expected to have a service life of 1,500 years. Now that other dams upstream of the Hoover Dam keep silt from accumulating under the dam, the expected lifetime has doubled to 3,000 years.

Watching specials on The History Channel, you will hear that about 100 people died during work on the dam. The number is actually over 400, but because the government listed Carbon Monoxide poisoning and Black Lung as unrelated diseases, most of these deaths were not listed as occupation-related.

At the top of the Dam, there is a star map that gives the appearance of the sky at the time that the dam was completed, as well as a description of the earth's axial wobble, so that archaeologists of the distant future might be able to fix the time that the dam was built.